First-Generation Students With Undecided Majors: A Qualitative Study of University Reacculturation

Abstract

When they enter institutions of higher education, students typically leave behind one culture to join another. Despite the higher rates of attrition for first-generation students over continuing-generation students and undecided students over declared students, little research has been focused on undeclared first-generation students. To understand the challenges and experiences of first-generation undecided students transitioning to a new and unfamiliar academic environment, we applied a reacculturation process to this qualitative exploratory case study of 35 students. Data came from interviews, focus group interactions, observations, and written responses to open-ended questions, which were subsequently triangulated. Findings revealed heightened feelings of stress, desire to become comfortable on campus, reliance upon continuing-generation friends, helpfulness of a specialized first-year seminar course, and uncertainty about advisors' roles.

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“…Iyer and Variawa (2019) used supervised Machine Learning classification algorithms to analyze the potential inclination of the undecided/undeclared first-year engineering students at the University of Toronto. Glaessgen et al (2018) examined the challenges and experiences of firstgeneration undecided students transitioning to a new and unfamiliar academic environment. The relationship between academic major change and ten personality traits (the five broad and five narrow traits) was investigated in Foster (2017).…”

First-Generation College Students: Goals and Challenges of Community College

“…Another challenge for FGCSs is social integration (Katrevich & Aruguete, 2017). Although FGCSs typically see greater benefit from extracurricular involvement and peer interaction than CGCSs, FGCSs usually are less likely to engage in these activities (Glaessgen et al, 2018; Sy et al, 2011). This places classes and instructors at the focal point for FGCSs to develop a connection with their school, especially as some FGCSs indicate that their grades are slightly more important to them than getting involved on campus (Glaessgen et al, 2018; Parnes et al, 2020).…”

“…It is true that some FGCSs receive emotional support from their parents and families as they earn bachelor’s degrees, such as the parental/familial efforts to understand the students’ lives at college and attendant difficulties, and to assure students not to worry about taking care of parents or siblings but to focus on their studies instead (Irlbeck et al, 2014; Wang, 2014). Despite these supports, as FGCSs navigate the new college environment with their families no longer able to provide other types of necessary support and guidance (e.g., college-relevant information and resources such as to meet instructor expectations or choose a major field of study), they typically rely on roommates, instructors, and themselves (Collier & Morgan, 2008; Glaessgen et al, 2018). As a result, finding information and resources for navigating college is often more challenging for a FGCS than for a CGCS.…”

Making Major Decisions

“…Some first-year exploratory students use their initial semesters to pursue general education courses, transition to college life, and reflect on possible majors (Ellis, 2014). However, some studies have shown that these students may be less likely to persist beyond their first year (Leppel, 2001) and have a harder time with their college transition (Glaessgen et al, 2018). On the contrary, Spight (2020) found with a sample of 4,489 students that exploratory students did not differ significantly from decided students when it came to persistence or precollege factors.…”